Terry Mosher gets Pip award from YMCA's Camp Kanawana

Andrew Caddell, left, presenter of the Pip Award, with The Montreal Gazette's Terry Mosher, recipient of the eighth Pip award, on Aug. 8, 2015, in the dining hall of the YMCA's Camp Kanawana in St-Sauveur, where the ceremony took place. They are holding the award, which is in the form of a paddle. Jack Caddell

ST-SAUVEUR — To call Terry Mosher a cartoonist is like calling Rembrandt a painter, said Andrew Caddell in presenting the 2015 Pip award from the YMCA’s Camp Kanawana to the illustrious editorial cartoonist.

The award, presented Aug. 8 in a ceremony at the Laurentian sleepaway camp, is the latest in a long string of honours earned during a distinguished and enduring journalism career by Mosher, known better to readers of The Montreal Gazette and his 47 books by his nom de plume, Aislin.

The Pip award was established by Caddell to recognize the contributions of distinguished Kanawana alumni: It is given each year to a former camper, counsellor or supervisor who best exemplifies the values of selflessness and contribution to the community. Mosher, 72, was a camper at Kanawana in 1952 and 1953.

Among those at the ceremony, held in the dining hall, were his five grandchildren: three are at Kanawana now, one is a past camper and one is a future camper.

“This year, we honour someone who has contributed enormously to both the cultural and civic life of Montreal,” Caddell said of Mosher in preparing to present the award. “He is a curmudgeon, a journalist and an advocate for free speech — which is especially important in this era when satirists have been targeted by violent extremists.

“They say the role of the journalist is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. Terry (Mosher) manages to do that every day he publishes a cartoon.”

Caddell also cited Mosher’s work as a longtime community volunteer with the Old Brewery Mission: He has been a board member since 2001 and “has helped countless people for whom life is an ongoing challenge.”

Terry Mosher with family and friends on Aug. 8, 2015, at YMCA Camp Kanawana, when he was presented with the 2015 Pip award, including his five grandchildren and his two daughters and their partners. Bottom row, from left: Vivian Maas, Morgan Doke, Jack Maas. Second row from bottom, from left: Luc Maas, Sabine Maas, Sydney Maas. Third row from bottom, from left: Sean Day. Terry Mosher, Jessica Mosher, Simon Maas, Top row, from left: Connor-Ann Doke, Jack Caddell, Aislinn Mosher, Andrew Caddell, Anitra Bostock.

The spirit of Kanawana is expressed in its motto, Non Nobis Solum — Latin for Not for Ourselves Alone. The inscription on Mosher’s Pip award, which is in the form of a paddle, reads: “For his support of the disadvantaged, for his defence of a free press, and for his commitment to the values of Non Nobis Solum in the world beyond camp.”

Mosher learned many skills at Kanawana he would probably not have learned otherwise, he said — including the J-stroke used in paddling a canoe. “For a city boy, that was something,” he recalled. “And I loved it.”

Although Saturday was his first visit to the Laurentian camp since the 1950s, the place appears to have changed little. “I could remember the layout; obviously, it stuck with me,” he said.

What also stuck with him were the social skills he acquired at camp. “Camp is one of the first steps away from your parents and it is hugely important in terms of developing skills like collegiality and gregariousness,” he said. “And you’re forced to get along with people.”

Another important skill he acquired was learning to laugh at himself — “essential in camp,” he said.

Here, one incident stands out: “Our group was out camping somewhere,” Mosher recalled. The others were heading off briefly and the counsellor tossed him a packaged dry macaroni and cheese mix “and told me to cook up something. I didn’t know how to cook. I looked at the box: It said: ‘Cook for seven minutes’ — and so I threw it on the fire. For two years I was known as the goofy kid who tried to cook mac and cheese by throwing it on the fire.”

Learning such attributes as collaboration and understanding the needs of others “makes you become that much more of a citizen and part of a community,” Caddell observed in a 2014 interview about Kanawana, where he spent three summers as an adolescent during the 1960s.

The Pip award is a memorial to his father, Philip “Pip” Caddell (1913-2004), a captain in the Royal Canadian Artillery during the Second World War and a longtime Montreal executive and community volunteer, and to his son James Caddell (1973-2005), a soldier in the Canadian reserves, a United Nations peacekeeper, and a federal public servant. Both attended Kanawana, Pip as a camper in 1928 and James as a camper and counsellor in the 1980s and 1990s.

Mosher is the eighth recipient of the award. Previous recipients include writer and broadcaster Stuart McLean and John Cleghorn, former CEO of the Royal Bank of Canada, a philanthropist and former chancellor of Wilfrid Laurier University.

He adds the Pip award to scores of other honours and awards: Mosher was made an Officer of the Order of Canada in 2003, he has twice won a National Newspaper Award, and he holds an honorary Doctor of Letters from McGill University. And in April, he and colleague Serge Chapleau of La Presse received the Hyman Solomon Award for Excellence in Public Policy Journalism, given to “extraordinary Canadians” who have contributed to public life, policy and governance in Canada.

Although Mosher remains on the board of the Old Brewery Mission, he rarely attends meetings these days. “If they need me, they call me,” he said.

Instead, he said, he has chosen to work in quieter, more low-key ways to do good. In much of his community work, he chooses to remain anonymous. As well, he helps to support smaller organizations by donating drawings to be used at fundraisers in auctions and silent auctions. Up to $2,000 has been raised for a single signed print. “It is a pleasure for me to help out,” he said.

“And people are getting something they can hang on their bathroom wall,” he joked.

Camp Kanawana, located on a 550-acre site with three lakes, was established by the YMCA in 1894. It was Quebec’s first summer residential camp and it has operated continuously longer than any overnight children’s camp. Visitymcakanawana.comto learn more.

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